Sex, Hope, & Rock 'n' Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis

A Conference at New York University
Tishman Auditorium - 40 Washington Square South
April 30, 2011 (9:30am-5pm)

The conference will honor, remember, and critically situate the acclaimed New York writer Ellen Willis (1941-2006) and her work across politics, gender, and popular culture, with a special attention to her unique contribution to intellectual history within the fields of music journalism and feminist cultural criticism.

The conference is free and open to the public.

Monday, January 23, 2012

We are proud to announce that Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music has been nominated for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle award for criticism.

We had a huge outpouring of press for the book (available at Ellen's Tumblr page) and are thrilled to know that has been in the hands of many. The National Book Award nomination means more people will get to know Ellen's work, and we are excited for that.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

The conference was a tremendous success. We thank all the participants, attendees, the NYU support staff, and our sponsors for helping make one heavy, inspiring, and uplifting day of talk on Ellen Willis's life and writing.

We will post images + videos as they become available. Please send images you took of the conference to ellenwillis2011 at gmail dot com, and include the photo credit and we will post them here.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Join us for Sex, Hope, & Rock 'n' Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis
Saturday, April 30 9:30am-5pm
Conference location: Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South
RSVPs are closed at this time, please plan to be at the venue at 9:30am for 10am launch.
Non-registered guests, please have patience while we attempt to find seating for you.
Note: No refreshments will be served due to venue specs, so please bring coffee, water, soda and snacks

Opening remarks and thanks: Conference organizers

**Karen Durbin, reading of one piece + remembrance**

Willis's Work in Context: Culture, Politics, History (10 a.m. -11:30 a.m.)A discussion of Willis's writing in terms of social history, the culture wars, feminism, and the left.

Ellen Willis and the Cultural Conversation (12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.)Ellen Willis’s work enabled and inspired a wide range of cultural responses, within as well as among the spheres of academia, journalism, music, and activism. This panel will hear from figures from these fields to explore Ellen as a catalyst for a new kind of cultural conversation, considering how—as a writer, teacher, and role model—she helped to make possible what it is that they do.

This conference celebrates the arrival of Out of the Vinyl Deeps (University of Minnesota Press, May 2011), an anthology of Willis's pioneering work as a critic of popular music, including many of her articles published during her tenure as the first popular music critic of the New Yorker.

Attendees of the conference can buy the book on-site through the vendor Bluestockings. We regret that we cannot offer a discount at the event due to the scale of the event (we thought we could DIY but it's gone mega).

Please visit the Ellen Willis Tumblr for more of Willis's writing, including work on women and sex, politics, pop culture, religion, and the world.

blog archive

This conference is organized by Nona Willis Aronowitz, Evie Nagy, and Daphne Carr. It is presented by NYU's Cultural Reporting and Criticism Concentration and the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, and sponsored by NYU's Office of the Dean for the Social Sciences, the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, the Dept. of Performance Studies, and the University of Minnesota Press.